100 Days of Hand Lettering Progression

So I wrote a few weeks ago about my decision to try and learn better hand lettering through a 100 Day Challenge. Today is Day 20, so I’m a fifth of the way through my challenge, and I really am loving it. I decided to set myself prompts for August to try and give myself some structure, and that has been super fun, too!

The biggest thing I wanted to get out of all this was to have a record of my progress so that I could (hopefully!) look back on it all at the end and say, YES! I IMPROVED!

I’ll be honest – I’ve nearly given up several times so far because I was just not seeing any progress being made. My desire to do well did not translate to an ability to do well. Such is life! But lately I’ve been seeing some improvement – not necessarily in how well I write – but in the quality of what I’m sharing. If you follow me on Instagram or Youtube, you might have seen me sharing some of my recent illustrated quotes. While others do it much better than I do, I finally realized that if I want to make pretty things, I need to do the things I’m better at. I’m not great at calligraphy yet, so I need to make it LOOK better by combining it with some fun art!

Again – I am capable of much better art works than these, but there is something so wonderful about sitting down for ten minutes with some pens and markers and coming up with something fun and vibrant!

I wanted to share my progress here so that I can look back and really see the improvements over time. Hopefully by day 100, I’ll have quite a portfolio of awesome illustrated quotes!

Feel free to click any thumbnail to see the full photo. These are in reverse order so the newest are at the top.

DAY 20

DAY 19

DAY 18

DAY 17

DAY 16

DAY 15

DAY 14

DAY 13

DAY 12

DAY 11

DAY 10

DAY 9

DAY 8

DAY 7

DAY 6

DAY 5

DAY 4

DAY 3

DAY 2

DAY 1

So there you have it. I can definitely see progress. In the early days I was simply writing words and trying to copy what others were doing so much better than I could. But I think I’m slowly finding my own style, and I am looking forward to really creating some new and fun pieces of art that will make my heart happy. That’s really what this whole blog is about anyway.